Bayer MaterialScience at Khimiya 2005

Published on 2005-06-21. Author :
SpecialChem

LEVERKUSEN -- At the Khimiya chemical trade fair in Moscow
from September 5 to 9, 2005, Bayer MaterialScience AG will be showcasing
a wide range of high-quality polymer products and technologies for the
automotive, furniture, domestic appliance, sports and leisure, footwear,
printing and other industries. The main focus at Stand 21D08 in Hall 2.1
will be on developments and solutions involving polyurethanes, polycarbonates,
thermoplastic polyurethanes and raw materials for coatings and adhesives.
Also present on the stand is Hennecke GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary
of Bayer MaterialScience. The company is showcasing its complete portfolio
of machinery and equipment for the cost-efficient processing of polyurethanes,
with one of the main highlights being the production of automotive components.

Multitec® Short Fiber Spraying, the polyurethane spraying system,
offers major benefits for the manufacture of large molded parts. The polyurethane
system avoids the environmental pollution resulting from the use of styrene
as a solvent in "traditional" production methods employing unsaturated
polyester resins. Multitec® also impresses with its high productivity.
It has a cycle time of just three to five minutes per molded part whereas
traditional production methods require time-consuming manual lamination.
The material offers similar advantages when it comes to the manufacture
of bathtubs and shower trays. Multitec® Short Fiber Spraying applied
to the back of a thermoformed thermoplastic film provides the necessary
stabilization thanks to the addition of glass fibers to the polyurethane.

Traditional casting methods for producing elastomer-coated rollers are
stretched to the limit if very large roller cores or very thick coatings
are required, for example in the paper industry. In such cases, direct
rotational coating using the Bayer MaterialScience one-pass technology
and Baytec® casting elastomer is the method of choice. And it has
its advantages for coating small rollers too, given that it works very
economically and produces roller surfaces of particularly high quality.

The company has also made a breakthrough in the development of three-dimensional
plastic parts with photorealistic decorative features. This was achieved
using a tailor-made film structure consisting of a digitally printable
polycarbonate film from the Makrofol® range and a special second film
which is laminated onto the first. The resultant composite can then be
thermoformed and back-injected with plastic. This technology opens the
way for decorative features in resolutions comparable with offset printing.

The single-frame radiator grille of the new Audi A6 sets design trends
for the front section of cars. Makroblend® DP 7645 - a new blend of
polycarbonate and polyethylene terephthalate (PC/PET) - is used in the
manufacturing process. It offers designers great freedom and a whole host
of other impressive properties. One key benefit worth highlighting is
the outstanding low-temperature impact strength - a key prerequisite for
the protection of pedestrians. In spite of its high stiffness, the material
is also tough enough to come through most minor accidents unscathed.

Injection-molded parts for sports goods are often required to have a
high level of transparency to provide as much scope as possible in terms
of decorative features and styling. The new aromatic variants of the thermoplastic
polyurethane Desmopan® offer high transparency irrespective of wall
thickness, good UV stability and high surface scratch resistance. Their
yellowness index is also significantly lower than with standard grades.
As a result, they satisfy all the material requirements for items such
as "transparent" ski boots that offer an interesting insight
into design details and the styling inside the boot.

Protecting pipelines against corrosion so that they function properly
over long periods is of considerable economic importance. Liquid polyurethane
systems based on the coating raw materials Desmodur® and Desmophen®
are ideally suited to this application. They offer excellent protective
properties and the coating, with thicknesses of up to two millimeters,
can be applied directly with no additional priming. The systems also combine
high impact strength with long-term elasticity and are resistant to microbes.
They retain these properties and offer good water and saponification resistance
at temperatures as low as -20 °C and as high as +120 °C.

Another focus for Bayer MaterialScience at Khimiya is on raw materials
for the solvent-free coating of wood. The new aliphatic polyurethane dispersions
match or outperform their predecessors but are completely solvent-free,
so they do not contain any N-methyl pyrrolidone. Bayhydrol® XP 2557
can be used to produce aqueous coatings that are particularly resistant
to the damage caused by the soles of shoes and the abrasive action of
dirt particles. Coatings based on Bayhydrol® XP 2593 are particularly
hard and also very resistant to the soles of shoes. Finally, Bayhydrol®
XP 2558 makes it possible to create wood coatings that are both hard and
abrasion-resistant. Bayhydrol® UV XP 2420, for example, is a UV radiation-curable,
water-based polyurethane dispersion combining high elasticity with good
weathering and chemical resistance that is recommended for external applications.